


i've come to burn your kingdom down

by Falcine



Series: like father like son [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest, it's not graphic but also A Lot is implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 07:28:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10939812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falcine/pseuds/Falcine
Summary: People often said that Ben had his mother’s eyes, dark and unyielding. Tall, just like his dad. Cheekbones like his mom.Luke sees something else.





	i've come to burn your kingdom down

**Author's Note:**

> Right yeah so I had the Luke-as-Arthur and Kylo Ren-as-Mordred thought and then I spiralled and it turned into 'what if Luke was Ben's father'

They hadn’t known.

This is what Luke will tell himself, late nights on Ahch-To, when the sun has long set and the dark sea is infinite and he is alone, save for his own thoughts. They were just stupid kids. They didn’t know anything, not then.

It wasn’t their fault.

 

* * *

 

The day Ben was born, Luke almost hadn’t made it. He was off planet somewhere—he doesn’t even remember what planet it was anymore—sweeping the galaxy for force sensitive children to rebuild. Han’s flickering image had flashed in the visi-phone, dishevelled and panicked, and only then did Luke notice the strange aching throb ever-present in the periphery of his force senses. 

_ “I just—I don’t know if I can do this, Luke,”  _ Han muttered. 

_ Is he coming?  _ Leia shouted from somewhere out of view.  _ Tell him if he doesn’t get his ass in his ship right this instant I swear I will cut his— _

“I’m coming!” Luke practically yelped. “Tell her I’ll be there…I’ll be there soon as I can.”

_ “You better hurry, _ ” Han grumbled.  _ “She’s gonna take my head off.”  _

Luka had laughed, light, ecstatic. The baby was  _ coming.  _ Leia was going to be a mother. He was— 

By the time he made it to the medbay, it was a flurry of beeping droids and people shouting orders at each other. Luke hung back around the door, watching in vague horror as masked nurses crowded around the bed. 

The birthing apparatus had hidden all the mess, dirty bits of labour, whisking away the slick blood and viscera underneath its soft white edges, but Luke had felt it all through the force. The second he saw her, death grip on Han’s hand and hair askew and all, the dull aching pain he’d been feeling sharpened, all at once, like a lightsaber stabbed into his vertebrae. Luke’s knees had gone weak and he clutched at the doorframe. 

No one noticed him, because before he could have both feet in room, Leia let out a throat shattering scream. 

The room was a mess, shouts of  _ he’s coming!  _ and  _ get ready!  _ tossed back and forth, but everyone was drowned out by the ragged sound of Leia’s breathing as if it were right next to his ear. She bared her teeth and hissed out in pain, and when their eyes met across the room, she reached out to him with the force and  _ pulled  _ and—

In the ensuing silence, all Luke could hear was the sound of her baby boy, wailing. 

 

* * *

 

The force likes to consume. This is the first thing Luke learns, when he dances too close to its depths and he can sense something reaching up, too, pulling at him. 

Later, digging through the wreckage of the Republic, he finds records of a prophecy, wonders if the force likes to snack on chosen ones just because it can. The dark flickers at the edges of his vision, sometimes, paints the world black when he’s fought someone to a standstill. Says,  _ go on, kill him, you know you want to, it would be so easy,  _ and Luke wonders if being strong in the force meant that it spoke all the louder in your ear.

Anakin was all-force, only half a man in his best days. Luke has the reprieve, at least, of a mortal mother—and a sister to split the burden with.

Much, much later, digging through the wreckage of his own Academy, Luke wonders what happens when those two halves come into a whole, when everything that was in Anakin is allowed to come back together into a roughly person shaped form again.

What then? 

How easy would it be, to fall? (How easy would it be for  _ him  _ to fall?)

 

* * *

 

Leia wanted him to name the baby. 

Blinking, Luke looked up. “ _ Me _ ? Why?” 

Leia shrugged. Her face was still haggard. They’d been moved to another room so there was less of the glaring white glow around now. Han had been sent off to acquire some food (“I don’t care where! Just find something before I starve to death.”) 

She cradled the baby boy in her arms, more delicate than Luke had ever seen her handle anything. 

“Han never met my parents,” she muttered, stroking at her baby’s face. “Just doesn’t feel right to name him after Bail.”

“I hope you didn’t ask me just because you’ve both met  _ my  _ father,” Luke said. 

Leia snorted. 

The words  _ our father  _ had never hung between them so potently as it had then. 

Luke cleared his throat, and looked away. “That doesn’t mean  _ I  _ should name him.”

“I can’t think of anything,” Leia said quietly, her brows furrowed. “I don’t want to name him anything the Empire’s ever touched.” She squinted into a corner in the room, her hand stilling, and Luke suddenly wondered then about the wide gulf of life she’d lived before she knew the both of them, the years of growing up in Palpatine’s shadow. She’d only ever told them stories before, nothing concrete. 

He sat down at the edge of the bed. Leia immediately shoved the baby in his arms, adjusting his grip so he was supporting his tiny head just under his hand. 

She didn’t pull back, so the three of them were sitting tangled on the bed, Leia’s hand just at the small of Luke’s back, the both of them practically hugging the baby at the same time between them.

“Ben,” Luke said. “How about Ben?” He brushed a thumb over the baby’s forehead. 

Leia smiled weakly. “I like that,” she whispered. “Ben.” She put a hand over his, the both of them unable to pull their hands away from baby Ben, if only just to feel his warmth, his light, the force of him too strong and pulling them both into his orbit. 

Ben’s pulse hammered erratically under his paper thin skin. He shifted in his sleep, eyes blinking blearily, and Luke didn’t seem able to wipe the ear splitting grin off his face.  _ Ben. _

“Hey Leia?”

Luke looked up to see Han at the door, standing with a cup of… well  _ something  _ in his hand. He smiled sheepishly, swinging into the room. “I couldn’t find anything but this… well they said it was pudding, but I’m not sure if that’s the right word for it.”

He set the pudding on the table by Leia’s bed, and Luke jumped up to make room on the other side of the bed. 

“Thanks Luke,” Han said gratefully when Luke passed baby Ben over to his arms.

Han looked like he was about to cry. He leaned down, letting out a shaky breath as he stared at his son. “Hey,” he whispered softly. “Did you like hanging with your Uncle Luke? I hope you didn’t miss your daddy too much, kiddo.”

“Ben,” Leia said. “His name is Ben.” 

 

* * *

 

And, well, it’d been a mistake, even then. 

It’d been—

Han was gone, and they weren’t sure if he was ever coming back, no matter how hard Luke insisted. Han was nothing but a frozen hunk of carbonite, then, locked up in Jabba’s filthy palace like a trophy, and Luke had never forgotten, but he thinks later that maybe Leia had wanted to. 

He still remembers the feeling of her lips on his, that time in the  _ Falcon. _

Somewhere inside, he knew it was to prove a point, but he still remembers her lips, and how soft they’d been, and how something buried deep in him had sparked as if to say  _ there you are.  _

(Too late, he realizes it’d been the force, recognizing itself, wanting to twist into a monstrous mobius strip of  _ more more more. _ )

So it’d been—

It’d been kisses in the dark, groping in the bunkers of Yavin IV, the sweet sheen of sweat on Leia’s brow. It’d been his hands scratching at her back, wanting to press her as close to him as possible, for the light inside them to engulf them both. 

Han was gone, and Leia wanted to forget, and Luke was lonely, hungry, desperate. 

He went to her. 

All these years later, and he regrets this the most. 

He went to her.

She hadn’t said no, had welcomed him with open arms and—

But he went to her. 

 

* * *

 

Mere weeks after Endor, Leia was throwing up. 

_ The baby is unusually developed for this stage in the pregnancy,  _ the doctors had told her.  _ Are you sure you have the right date of conception?  _

Leia had glared.  _ A month before Endor Han was a wall decoration. When the hell else would it have been?  _

She looked at Luke, then, snuck a terrified glance to him under Han’s ever present gaze that Luke hasn’t forgotten since. 

Luke had pressed his lips together, shook his head, and they never spoke of it. 

But, even then, they both knew. 

 

* * *

 

People often said that Ben had his mother’s eyes, dark and unyielding. Tall, just like his dad. Cheekbones like his mom. 

Luke sees something else. 

Wreathed in the flames he set, Ben doesn’t look a thing like Han Solo. His lips are twisted in a scowl, teeth bared in raw rage. That part is all Leia. The tension in his shoulders, the way he stalked forward after the rest of the fleeing students, that part is all Luke. 

Each wild swing of the lightsaber is all-force. 

Luke stumbles back, the remaining skin on his hand burning away in the roaring inferno. It burns even against the rain. 

Hissing steam rises up from the rocks around Ben. He is finally still, shoulders rising and falling in ragged breaths that Luke can hear as if right from his ear. He swings the spitting lightsaber again in a long, looping arc that slices through the rockface, as if only to show that he can. 

The red reflects in his eyes. 

Luke feels it—the raw tension of the force, the strain, the pull—except this time it’s not tugging at him. He feels the light, too, the gentle light, shining down on them like moonlight from far away. Ben stands half in shadow, half in that tender glow. 

Ben does not have Leia’s eyes. Leia’s eyes aren’t as dark, had never been half-tinged with madness. Ben has eyes that Luke has only ever seen in old, flickering holograms, Anakin’s eyes,  _ Skywalker eyes _ . 

It is a terrible thing, when disparates parts that were meant to stay apart came crashing together. 

_ Oh Leia,  _ Luke thinks,  _ we’ve made a monster. _


End file.
